A Soldier's Revelation
by arcadian viera
Summary: Long before the scheduled appearance of Celestial Being, many support groups that even the crew of Ptolemaius were not aware of began to prepare the world for them. A year prior to the predetermined date, an interesting incident occured. Graham x OC.


_It is A.D. 2306. In light of Celestial Being's official debut in a year's time, the support group Zephyrus was formed. Its members are composed mainly of top-level information analysts from the nth generation of staff that created Veda [as such, they were called Team Veda], the support system that Celestial Being would depend on completely for its missions. However, select members were chosen as their skills, lineage and personalities were ideal for special missions necessary for the fulfilment of Aeolia Schenberg's master plan. These missions include intel gathering, infiltration of target information bases and furthering of research on GN particles. Its captain, coded Perpetual Spirit, handed a sheaf of papers to each of her protègèes, papers that detailed the roles they would be expected to play as information agents of Celestial Being. One agent, Kristina Montpeiller, finds herself in a delicate situation._

"Good day. I'm Mireille, intel staff. It's an honor to be working with you!"

Formulaic greeting. It was the sort of cut-and-paste introduction that he'd reply to absentmindedly with another cut-and-paste answer, but somehow this girl _compelled_ him to do otherwise. Was it the spark in her clear, tourmaline eyes? Or was it the obvious aura of _awareness_ in her, something that told you not to take her at face value, something that most people did not possess? Whichever way he chose to put it [or chose not to, for that matter], Mireille Cadenza would be difficult to put out of his mind. He was, categorically, a very impatient man with a one-track mind. Billy Katagiri would _never _cease pestering him if he found out that he was taking too much interest in something other than a war machine. Why, just a few months ago, that ridiculous nutcase set him up on a blind date with a woman almost ten years his senior! _That_ was the kind of woman he thought compatible with the likes of an ace pilot of the Union like him? Preposterous. She was so repulsive that the temptation to just ditch her in the middle of the restaurant and pull Billy out of the bush he knew he was hiding in [to just get _away, _in short] made him go crazy. He was just too much of a gentleman to actually go through with it. Crap, Mireille was making him blush. _Good thing no one noticed,_ he thought.

"Graham Acre, First Lieutenant of the Flag Fighters squadron. Pleased to meet you." He half-stretched out his hand, unsure if a handshake was the proper way to greet a woman, coworker or no. To his immense relief, she put out her own hand and shook his briskly. Good. She wasn't a _girly, _ridiculously annoying sort of woman then. His type, though he'd never admit it, even to himself. She smiled at him, saying, "I doubt I'd be of much use in the battlefield, but please leave all the technical difficulties of the missions to me. I'll be sure to arrange everything to go as smoothly as possible."

_I walked out of the convening room as calmly as I could. It's my first mission as an official infiltrator of Zephyrus, and I can't afford to lose it just before I've begun. Spirit will _never_ forgive me for failing my duty to Celestial Being. But how am I going to be able to keep this up? There was absolutely nothing in the mission brief about me being assigned to that lunatic, Graham Acre! No wonder the fine print read, "...use of aesthetic skills highly recommended." What a way to put it. Sure, it doesn't mean whoring, but it's just as degrading. He is undeniably more tolerable to look at than his friends, but fat lot of good that's going to do for me. I'll bet he doesn't even have the slightest inkling of the fact that I'm no regular Union informant. If he finds out that the world will not be the same this time next year..._

_Ugh. No way, it's not just him! Why are all those other guys staring at me like I'm __something to eat? They're worse than the HRL dogs! _Please_ help me live through this. How long am I supposed to be here again? Oh, crap. __Five years__._

_A.D. 2307. After the supposed destruction of Celestial Being's mothership, Kristina, under the alias _Mireille Cadenza,_ is confronted with yet another problem._

None of the members of Union's military expected something like this. Their best soldier was now under the intensive care unit due to injuries from an intense battle with a much-hated Gundam unit. If that weren't enough, there was also an added factor by the name of iManager [short for Intel Manager] Mireille Cadenza. The official story from the top was that she was ordered to "look after" Lt. Acre, as leaving him under the eye of Researcher Katagiri was questionable. The whole base was seething with rumors about the supposed love triangle of -Billy. Naturally, she paid no attention to them. _Men. They claim to detach themselves from affairs that they categorize as girly, and now look at them,_ she thought scathingly. It was all she could do not to squeeze the gauze she was holding into a pulp. It wasn't as if she _wanted_ to be here... no. What was she thinking? Of course she wanted to be here.

She looked at the immobile form of her charge, sighing. Walking over to the side of the military-issued infirmary bed, she stretched out a hand and felt for a pulse. Slow, but normal. _He'll live. There's no guarantee of a full recovery, though_, she thought to herself, glancing at the medicated patches she'd previously applied on his face. His obsession with the Gundams was a bit much, even for a mechaphile like him. Imagine customizing and recustomizing a Flag unit day and night [and she didn't really care about the amount of effort Katagiri was putting into it, because he was, in her opinion, too wussy to actually deny Lt. Acre any of his outrageous extracurricular requests] just to be able to match a Gundam in speed and power. Right. As if a Flag unit plus a fake GN drive could ever come close to a true Gundam unit.

"How's he doing?"

Mireille looked up and across the room. Katagiri had, as usual, entered without knocking. She gave a noncommital shrug, pointedly glancing at the numerous life support monitors attached to Graham's body. "He doesn't _need_ all these machines on him. Couldn't you please tell the doctors to get these things out of the room? It makes it look as if he's in critical condition, which he isn't. He can breathe normally without that stupid oxygen mask." Her snappy replies no longer fazed him, she noted dryly. He only smiled apologetically. "Sorry about that. Do you want me to take over for you?" Eyes locked firmly on his, she measured out the situation carefully. If she let him take over, who would make sure no idiots would come in and do more damage to their beloved captain? But if she didn't, he'd relay her message to the doctors wrongly and cause further damages to her already stained reputation in the base. Either way, it was going to be disastrous. Before she could make up her mind, however...

Creak.

Billy and Mireille both looked toward the patient they'd been happily neglecting for the past five minutes. Oops. He was awake, and it also looked like he'd been listening in to their cat-and-mouse exchanges. Mireille raised her eyebrows, challenging his glare, given that all he could manage was a sort of halfhearted, one-eyed squint. It was all Billy could do not to laugh at them. "Stop talking about me as if I were some unwanted outpost shift," Graham complained hoarsely. "Katagiri. Tell those idiots that I'm all right. It's my Flag that needs an overhaul."

Billy, ever the obedient puppy dog, only nodded and slipped out of the room to reprimand the military doctors. Mireille, who was less inclined to such behavior, only smirked at him. "Right," she commented. "You don't really need an overhaul, Lt. Acre. It's just that you need about a ton of bandages and gauze to keep you in one piece, that's all." Again with the halfhearted, one-eyed squint. "Very funny, miss iManager. Or should I say, nurse?"

_His face plagues my mind. Half-healed scars, bright-eyed despite the pain, a memory of the final, bloody battle surely pained the pride of the Flag Fighter. There was nothing I could do about it. My mission was terminated early because of the unforeseen destruction of the Ptolemaius. I begged the Captain to give me time to settle personal business at the base. She gave me one week. In those seven days of running to and from the infirmary, bringing this and returning that, I had no chance to tell him the truth. I feared being overheard by his shadow of a friend, Billy Katagiri, who sees through illusions and pierces right into the truth. To think that he was able to discover the functions of the GN particles, though the samples he was provided with were by no means the undisputed original. On the last night, I left him with the only thing of significance to me._

Graham awoke in the middle of the night, the moon shining brightly into his cell of a recovery room, without a sound piercing the heavy silence. He shifted his gaze from the window to the tiny table next to him. Medication. Bandages. And... wasn't that the novella he had given Mireille, when he found out that she played the piano? It was the first time he had gone out with a coworker besides Billy, Howard and Daryl, and a woman...! Billy had pestered him about it for days on end, relenting only when he was given new information on the Gundams to play with. Even Howard and Daryl had caught on, teasing him about his new non-mecha preoccupation good-naturedly.

He sat up, groaning. Damn that boy and the Gundam. He didn't care about the scars; those injuries were proof of his pride in avenging his Over Flag squadron. He reached out and picked up the book with his good hand. A piece of crisp white paper fell out, along with a minature data card. "_My name is Anya Kristina Montpeiller, and I am an informant of Celestial Being" _was all that it said. Gazing disbelievingly at the slip of paper, he thought, '_Kristina_ Montpeiller?' The shock of seeing that name completely drowned out the initial anger and sorrow he felt at discovering that the woman he treasured was part of the damned organization that took his friends and comrades away from him. He remembered the name from one of his painstakingly-completed research papers back in military college. Pages from the age-old tome he took the data from flashed in his mind's eye.

Kristina Montpeiller: final heir to the House of Montpeiller, an influential French noble family , in the 21st century. The family estate was razed before she could claim her title as heir. Died in 20xx.

If what he recalled was correct, then she should be... But what did the note mean? _Anya Kristina Montpeiller, _it said. Was she a descendant? The book had specifically stated that the family line was no longer in existence. The research department was only a floor up from the infirmary. He grit his teeth, got up and walked to Billy's office despite the pain, taking the book, note and data card with him. _What am I doing? Why do I not hate her as I should? She is part of the organization that killed my friends, and yet here I am, consumed by the desire to know more about her. _He kicked the main computer on and pushed the tiny microchip into a reader, growling impatiently when it refused comply. When at last it recognized and scanned the microchip, the screen turned white. It was on autoplay. On the wide military computer screen flashed the words "A Dedication" across an image of Kristina. Gentle music began to pour from the speakers. The first track was of a piano. It was the classic Canon, played ever so gently and sweetly. He closed his eyes, letting the music wash over him. When it ended, another track played, this time a piano with string accompaniment. A voice began to sing,

Flowers sway in the wind as if dancing  
So that the rain moistens the earth  
Even though this world is alive, coming closer together  
Why do people hurt each other?  
Why do partings come about?

Even if you go far away, still  
You're always right in the middle of my heart  
While they remain buried away by that kind smile  
Even if I feel pain  
In fragments of you that I held, because we'll still connect  
I trust that we can meet again

_I'm waiting for your love_

He suddenly sat up straighter, wondering if he heard the lyrics right. This was undoubtedly Mireille's, no, Kristina's voice, but what was going on? The blond ace stared at the screen, which still displayed the image of her face, the words "A Dedication" written in script across it.

I love you, I trust you  
_I want you to share your loneliness with me _

He felt his face flush despite the cold and the throbbing pain. _She's being silly, leaving a note and a video like this when she could just tell me straight that she..._ He lost his train of thought, realizing something that he should have realized the moment he saw the book on the bedside table. _She's gone._ The thought hit him harder than he expected, making him pound the table unneccessarily. His eyes stung. Damn it. First his friends, then his comrades-in-arms, and now her? Nothing ever went right ever since Celestial Being invaded his life, nothing he did could change that... No. He could still change that which was destroyed. He could still shape his future. Clinging to that last thought, he took the microchip from the reader, turned off the computer and left the room.

A/N: Well, this was completed during the time skip, so we all know that he decided to pursue the path of the samurai in order to find a reason to live. Once I gather my thoughts again, I'll try to write another chapter in line with season two. [EDIT] I changed my mind (xD) the next chapter will detail the development of their relationship. :D


End file.
